Who attacked Trish Winterman - her husband, lover, taxi-driver or boss? Or was a new character (a convicted rapist) now the prime suspect? 15 questions we had after Episode 4 of Broadchurch, by Jim Shelley

Three new characters dominated developments in Broadchurch – the last thing we expected, or needed frankly.

All from the area and still living there these were: a convicted rapist back home on parole, a rape victim reporting an attack two years earlier, and a female teacher who had sent a threatening text to Trish Winterman, another local woman who’d been raped at a recent party.

Rape, rape, and more rape… That’s Broadchurch for you. So many residents had been involved in rape, murder, pornography, paedophilia, or other dubious, secretive, activities that the biggest mystery about the renowned Dorset beauty spot was why anyone was living there.

Not only were the men universally creepy Broadchurch seemed to be a town where even women were vile to women (to the rape victims).

Who dunnit? Trish Winterman's character posed more questions for viewers of Broadchurch on Monday night as they tried to work out who attacked her

The arrival of Aaron Mayford, Laura Benson, and Sarah Elsey into the action was the last thing we expected.

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After all it was Week Four, which meant viewers had now spent half the series struggling to work out what the hell what the people we had already met were up to and which one had raped Trish – maddening enough thank you.

We had plenty of suspects to be getting on with too – so many that the eight million fans had not unreasonably assumed the culprit was one of the characters highlighted in the opening three episodes. The grounds for suspicion about them were not diminishing either. On the contrary...

Retracing steps: Trish returned to the scene of the crime in the hope it will prompt her to remember something more about the attack

If anything at the end of Week Four Trish’s boss Ed Burnett, her taxi-driver Clive Lucas, her lover Jim Atwood, her husband Ian Winterman, and his former student Leo Humphries, looked more potentially culpable than ever.

Their alibis did not stack up and their behaviour on the night of the attack (like their personalities in general) was decidedly duplicitous and shady. Incredibly, they’d all been seen lurking round the lake between 11.30 and midnight (where and when the rape took place).

As well as these, familiar faces from the first series (the Reverend Coates, Mark Latimer, and his mate Nige) were not in the clear.

Developments: In the episode, Cath reveals interesting new information about the night of her party, while a match is made for the male DNA found on Trish

New lead? An unknown woman walks into the police station - and delivers some devastating new information when interviewed by Ellie and Hardy

A host of more unlikely suspects included the caterers, a musician, and the owner of the country house that staged the party. Then there was DS Ellie Miller’s teenage son Tom, whose obsessive interest in pornography was alarming, not least because it suggested he took after his father (the paedophile who in the first series had murdered Tom’s best friend Danny Latimer).

All pretty unpleasant...Nonetheless, writer Chris Chibnall decided that Broadchurch’s existing array of creepy local suspects was not enough.

DC Katie Harford located Aaron Mayford, a convicted rapist, on the Sex Offenders Register. He had just moved back into the area and was on parole, after serving 16 months CHECK in prison for raping a woman he’d got drunk with at a conference.

New information: DC Katie Harford thinks she has a strong lead when she discovers a new suspect who doesn't have an alibi

‘His victim was tied and gagged - just like Trish,’ DC Harford revealed.

Of course she was, we thought...This was Broadchurch. Equally inevitably, on the night Trish was attacked he’d been not far from Broadchurch, fishing, alone. (Trish had been bound with fisherman’s twine, although every man in the village seemed to have some).

Mayford insisted he’d been unfairly convicted, claiming the sex had been consensual.

‘I did tie her up yeah. I like to play. So what? There’s nothing abnormal about it. Everyone’s reading 50 Shades Of Grey on the bus. I’m not a rapist.’

He was vile though. As DS Ellie Miller remarked to DI Hardy after they questioned him: ‘he certainly lived down to expectations.’

His attitude to women was retarded and repugnant - typically for most of the local male suspects. Trish Winterman was much older than the woman he had allegedly raped, he pointed out, as if this made his actions acceptable.

The way he later confronted DC Harford in her surveillance car was chillingly creepy.

‘Are you police? I wouldn’t mind being inside a police girl,’ he leered. ‘I like you watching me.’

Had he raped Trish Winterman? Or indeed Laura Benson, the woman who ended the show reporting an attack from two years earlier?

It was another week that left us with more questions than answers.

More questions than answers: While the detectives continue to get to the bottom of things, the viewers have not worked out much more about the plot

Here are 15 other questions we needed answering after Week Four of Broadchurch.

1. Why did Trish Winterman tell Beth Latimer and the flowers and anonymous card she’d received but not the police?

2. Why didn’t detectives Miller and Hardy start asking the guests or catering staff who had been drinking vodka at the party after Trish recalled her assailant smelt of vodka?

3. Who owns the cottage right next to the spot where Trish was raped and when are the police going to bother to track them down? (‘We’ve not heard back from them yet?’ Miller told Hardy.)

4. How could the police not have not found the cricket bat, action man, football, and other kids toys in the grounds of the house where the rape took place?

5. Was Trish really knocked out with a cricket bat? (‘It’s one of a pair actually,’ said the owner of the house. ‘I’ve got no idea where the other one’s got to.’)

6. Why has DC Katie Harford not revealed that one of the suspects (Ed Burnett) is her father?

7. Would DC Harford not have reacted in a more assertive way when Aaron Mayford got into her car and made lewd suggestions to her – considering her is a policewoman?

8. Is it significant that Ian Winterman keeps asking characters such as his daughter Leah and friend Jim if Trish has told them she remembers anything yet?

9. What is the material on the laptop that Ian and Leo are plotting to remove/cover up?

10. What was Clive Lucas doing with the keys we saw him with in his sinister lock-up?

11. Was it suspicious that Trish’s best friend Cath Atwood (whose husband slept with Trish the day of the rape) was in such a good mood at the football match, having suggested ‘we can still have a bit of fun can’t we?’ She also complained people turned up early at the party where her best friend had been raped. Hardly appropriate...

13. How could Ed, Jim, Leo, Clive Lucas, the catering staff, and possibly Ian Winterman all have been around the lake area at around 11.30pm – when the rape took place – without one of them having witnessed the attacked?

14. Why does DI Ellie Miller keep walking home alone in the dark, bumping into different people each week, when there’s a rapist on the loose – tempting fate?

15. Is DI Alec Hardy (David Tennant) getting more and more Scottish by the episode?

Unanswered questions: Is DI Alec Hardy (David Tennant) getting more and more Scottish by the episode?